Sonia Gandhi’s current visits
to Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have suddenly taken on a heavy dose of
faith at a time of political uncertainty and impending elections.

In Shirdi, the Congress
president stepped into the Sai Baba temple on her way to a political rally
at Loni. Tomorrow at Ujjain, where she has another meeting, Sonia will
drop in at the Mahakal temple.

Sonia arrived in Shirdi
at noon and performed aarti. During her 20-minute visit, the Shirdi Sai
Sansthan, which runs the temple, presented her a statute of the Sai Baba
and a book on his life.

Although Congress sources
suggested personal faith as the motive — today happens to be the birthday
of Rahul Gandhi who turns 38 — seeking the Sai Baba’s blessings for her
son may not be the only reason that took Sonia to the shrine.

A Christian who was once
beset by questions about her Italian birth, Sonia has often turned to temple
visits to make a political point. She may have felt the need again at a
time her party is deadlocked with the Left on the nuclear deal and the
BJP has once more called for a Ram temple ahead of a series of elections.

Party old-timers recalled
that Sonia had visited the Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh during the
1998 general election, soon after which the Congress Working Committee
had passed a resolution that said: “Hinduism is the most effective guarantor
of secularism in India.”

When the Sangh parivar
raised a furore over her “foreign origins” a decade ago, Sonia visited
the Ramakrishna Mission in Delhi — a favourite spiritual refuge for Indira
Gandhi — on January 12, 1999. She spent a day with Swami Gokulanandaji
Maharaj, underlining her “Indianness” and her Gandhi family credentials,
while doing the Congress’s Hindu vote bank no harm.

The Mahakal and Shirdi
shrines rank among the highest Hindu pilgrimage centres. With elections
coming up in Maharashtra and BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, she could not afford
to ignore these temples during a political trip.

In September 1998, when
Sonia chaired her party’s Panchmarhi conclave, she visited the Mahadev
temple in the Madhya Pradesh town. Her next destination was the Brahma
temple in Pushkar, Rajasthan.

These expressions of faith
haven’t always paid off at elections. Sonia had taken the holy dip at Kumbh,
Allahabad, in 2001 before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.